Document Viewer (Evince) history navigation

Question

I would like to insert a string value into a specific range of indexes in an already declared byte array. How would I do this?

byte [] sector = new byte[SECTORSIZE];
String str1 = "Sector 0, Record 0";
//I want to insert str1 into sector at indexes 0 - str1.length()
String str2 = "Sector 0, Record 1";
//I want to insert str2 into sector at indexes 128 - str2.length() + 128

Solution 1

Under Evince 3.4 you can activate a "back" button by editing the toolbar (Edit → Toolbar; drag and drop functions to toolbar):

I don't think there's any hotkey by default but you might be able to add a custom one.

If you're looking for customization you might be better off with a PDF viewer like Okular or qpdfview anyway. Both should offer the function you're searching for.

Solution 2

As of Evince 3.32, the key bindings are Alt + P and Alt + N. I cannot find the toolbar button anymore.

Reference: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evince/issues/770

Solution 3

Ubuntu 20.10

Things have flipped around now, it's so much fun:

• Evince 3.38 history is working fine, notably with the Alt+P/Alt+N shortcuts (but I discovered that their header only search is useless: How to find/search for text results only in the Outline/headers in PDFs open in Evince? so I still can't use it daily)
• Okular 20.08 history is completely broke with Alt+Shift+Left/Right, possibly: https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg489269.html

I'll still go crazy one of these days.

I've made a minimal test file for this now: https://github.com/cirosantilli/media/blob/master/multipage_refs/multipage_refs.pdf

Annoying Evince history bugs

These have haunted me for years, including Ubuntu 18.04, Evince 3.28.2, and make the history jump back feature unusable for the technical documents I read all day:

• the history jump does not jump to the expected location of a sane human:

  • https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evince/issues/399
  • https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evince/issues/558
  • https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evince/issues/810

• there was no default (Alt+Left) shortcut / it is not documented / I don't have the patience to find out how to create it: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evince/issues/770

  Tha bug was fixed in Evince 3.32 as mentioned at: https://askubuntu.com/a/1150128/52975 and as of 3.34.1-1 I have a "Keyboard Shortcuts" menu entry that shows "Alt + P" and "Alt +N" as the shortcuts.

  However, possibly due to the aforementioned history bugs, the feature is still useless to me, e.g. if I visit https://static.docs.arm.com/ddi0487/fa/DDI0487F_a_armv8_arm.pdf and click a table of contents link, Alt + P does nothing instead of jumping back to the table of contents as expected.

You should go and upvote them.

Best solution I've found for Ubuntu 20.04

Use Okular. It has a default jump at Alt + Shift + Left/Right, and other key features like searching in the Table of Contents (or at least has them in a place I can easily find).

Best solution I've found for Ubuntu 18.04

Use Firefox!: What PDF viewers are available for Ubuntu? Okular was buggy there too, I forgot why now.

Solution 4

I prefer the xpdf viewer for this reason. It has history navigation and is quite lightweight and rapid. It is available for ~any system running X11.

View more solutions

Comments

[Admin]

You want to click on a link which takes you to another part of the same pdf file and then navigate back to where you were? I just looked at the pdf viewers that are part of Firefox and Chrome. Looks like they don't have this feature either. Or if they do, I didn't come across it. Would be a handy feature to have.

[pabouk - Ukraine stay strong]

@vasa1: Yes, this is the most frequent use case - to return to the link. Also sometimes when I use search I would like to return to the original location later. I know that Adobe Reader for Windows has this function but I would prefer using a more lightweight viewer.

[Tunaki]

String.getBytes(charset)

[kaybuzz]

I knew that one from a little research. Ok so now that you get the strings to be byte arrays, how do you insert those arrays into specific positions in the sector array?

[pabouk - Ukraine stay strong]

Thank you! The back button has a different behaviour in comparison to page history in web browsers but it is very useful. Unfortunately the procedure for adding keyboard shortcuts works for menu items only. I will test the two recommended viewers.

[Admin]

Thanks for mentioning qpdfview! It allows setting the page background color. That's a feature I was missing.

[Bach]

qpdfview is great, but it doesn't have smooth scrolling like evince (3.10) has. How can one browse history with evince 3.10? Edit->Toolbar does not exist any more.

[Glutanimate]

@Bach Would love to check if there's another way to do this in evince, but I am still on Ubuntu 12.04, sorry. Chances are the GNOME devs have done away with this feature. That seems to be their modus operandi these days :/.

[becko]

I don't think the back button is available in Evince 3.10

[sds]

alas, this does not work with toolbar buttons

[ntc2]

In newer versions of Evince -- I'm using 3.16.1 -- the back button is automatically part of the tool bar and no longer configurable. See picture in this other answer: askubuntu.com/a/372611/56280. However, there isn't any keyboard shortcut as far as I know.

[Daniel]

I see no back button in 3.18.2.

[mathtick]

The back button does not work.

[user643722]

Thanks. I just found it listed under the new Keyboard Shortcuts menu option after clicking the "Hamburger" button. It also indicates there that <kbd>Back</kbd> and <kbd>Forward</kbd> can be used, but I can't see these on my keyboard.

[Raffi Khatchadourian]

Can these be mapped to Alt + -> and Alt + <-?

[nurgasemetey]

Xreader has own bugs, like accidental autoscrolling(I tried every pdf reader like atril, evince, xreader, qv)